There has been more than a 30 per cent drop in the number of students from the Republic applying for places in British colleges and universities, according to figures announced this morning by the British UCAS admissions service.
This will be the first year both British and Irish students will have to pay the annual £1,000 tuition fee introduced by the British Labour government.
The new fee appears to have depressed the number of British applications by just over 4 per cent. However, the numbers of students applying from the Republic to third-level institutions in England and Wales has fallen by 30.7 per cent, from 9,298 to 6,448.
The much smaller number applying to Scottish universities has fallen by 33 per cent.
The education officer of the Union of Students in Ireland, Mr Malcolm Byrne, said last night that with up to 3,000 more students staying at home this year, both the demand for college places and the number of points would rise.
The actual increase will become clearer when the Central Applications Office publishes its figures in the next few weeks.
Mr Byrne also pointed to the likelihood that applications for places from Northern Ireland to colleges and universities in the Republic would now rise significantly.
Until 1996, Republic of Ireland students paid fees at their own colleges, while being able to go to Northern and British colleges free. Since the abolition of undergraduate fees in the Republic that year, and with the introduction of fees in the UK, the situation has been reversed.
USI's press officer, Ms Majella O'Doherty, said there was "an obligation on the Minister for Education to provide extra third-level places to meet the increased demand caused by students not going to Britain".
She said because most of the 3,000 students who would normally have gone to the UK would have done so because they could not afford to study at home, Mr Martin would also have to look again at the present "totally inadequate" level of maintenance grants.